Syrian Digital Library of Cuneiform: Building Lines of Communication to Ancient Syria

The Syrian Digital Library of Cuneiform (SDLC) project represents the collaborative
efforts of a Syrian and international team of researchers to prepare an interactive
Arabic / English / French presentation of a rich and indigenous cuneiform tradition dating
back five millennia.

The cuneiform tablets collections,
kept mainly in the museums of Damascus, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa,
and Idlib, originate from close to 40 different archaeological sites.
Based on an integrated catalogue, those texts which have already been published will be
the subject of an electronic edition, consisting of digital images and transliterations, presented
via the web-pages of the SDLC. This presentation will be directly linked to the international project
CDLI, making the texts part of an ever growing corpus of
cuneiform texts freely available online, and benefitting from the powerful search tools of
that project.

The SDLC website will facilitate the establishment of new line of
communication among members of an international community that is
growing increasingly aware of the contributions
of ancient Syria to modern culture.

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.